Dazzler & Le Bad Boy

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 07-25-2010 · S03E06

Russell brings Sookie and Bill home from Alcide's, tossing the latter awhile before handing him over to Lorena (who is now just stealing dialogue directly from old >Buffy episodes, like, verbatim -- not that it sticks out, in what turns out to be a fairly cliché-laden, lazy script, for having such great moments), and taking Sookie upstairs for a scary little détente in which she admits she has no idea what she is or what she is doing. But the revelation that Bill's been keeping a creepy dossier on her -- and thus, the last two seasons may well have been a very complicated, nasty lie -- does nothing to stop her single-minded quest to save him while yelling his name as many times and locations as possible.

Meanwhile, Lorena and Bill have a very long, very ridiculous conversation/torture session packed with retardo gems like "Even as you face the true death I will be inside you" and "A girl who once marveled in the beauty of all life now delights in bringing pain and horror to every moment" and "Only then will I be truly free of the disease that is you!" Since she can't kill him herself, Lorena hands Bill over to Coot and Debbie, as a sort of buffet for junkie werewolves.

Life is more complicated for old Eric, who is still trying to I guess nail Russell for killing his Viking family or whatever, but needs his help saving Pam first. This means being really mean to Sookie, both in public and alone -- because Viking revenge is, like, way more important than nailing a waitress just to piss off Bill Compton -- and continuing his seductions of Russell and Talbot. Russell takes him to Sophie-Anne's, where Eric offers to twist her head off for framing him once the Magister came calling, but Russell finally gets her to agree to marry him.

Bon Temps sucks this week: Jessica feeds on a bitchy customer right under Arlene's racist nose, while Tommy disappears and Sam somehow randomly figures out that Joe Lee's been betting on his wife and son in underground dogfights. Jason's new girlfriend is affianced in Hotshot, probably to her brother or something, and pretends not to know who he is -- after blue-balling him at the river and sniffing the air like a shifter -- so Jason has no other choice than to get all aggressive with poor Kitch Maynard some more.

Jesus and Lafayette spend a lot of time playing pool and listening to music from the Sex & The City finale, I guess because Talbot explained to them what being gay is supposed to be like. In the middle of their attempts at and failures to make out, though: Jesus's mother was raped, so nobody knows who his father is and obviously he is at least half-supe (they even make sure to remind you that his name can also be pronounced the other way, like a certain carpenter who nobody knew who his Dad was and liked to hang out with hookers) and also, he: Is a surprisingly devout practitioner of Santeria, is very good at helping Lafayette beat up Hotshot homophobes, and does not date drug dealers, or people who do V. Being told how interesting someone is, that's a little different from finding them interesting. Hey, Jesus, do you have any more new character quirks or traits? In addition to these fifty?

The Franklin & Tara Show continues to be absolutely amazing, as she talks him into untying her, letting her feed -- "Kill me hard!" he screams at one point -- and then falling asleep. She sends Sookie a mental message to get ready, grabs a mace off the wall, and beats Franklin's head in. They cut loose, Sookie goes looking for Bill, and Tara runs into Alcide. Instead of asking him to bench-press her, which is the first thing any sane person would do, she asks if they can use his car to get Bill out of there. We can only hope that having your brains bashed out is just as safe for vamps as having their necks fakely twisted around, but I'm sure he'll just think it was foreplay or something.

Finally -- once Debbie and Coot have drunk their fill -- Sookie finds Bill in the barn and says his name like one billion times and talks a lot about saving him but then doesn't save him. Instead, Lorena, who apparently is just impervious to the Bleeds this year because it's the goddamn middle of the day, attacks Sookie and drinks deep.

Pretty sure the bad thing happens . Other than that, it's the halfway point, which means things will start winding back the other way, people in control losing control and vice versa, the chain thing finally gets explained, new guardians introduced and old secrets revealed, Hadley returns, Sophie-Anne's in a cage, Jesus is something or another, and you probably wouldn't believe who lands Sookie in the hospital if I told you to your face.

Russell drags Sookie back into the Compound foyer, with Bill in custody behind. It is very dramatic and slow-motion, as all the players come zooming in: Lorena in her lovely ruffled top, Eric in that sweater, Talbot just sort of stand around. The guard tosses Bill to the floor, and Russell hands Sookie over to Talbot. Lorena stresses out to a certain extent, although Talbot's not hugely surprised that Bill is not for real. Bill stakes the massive guard, and then jumps on Russell's head; it is very surprising to see him do this, but Russell's apparently 3000 years old, so he tosses Bill up into the ceiling, which means that shrieking Talbot now has two problems: The pile of former guard on the floor, and untold damage to the ceiling frescoes. Wonder if he'll ever stop screaming.

Russell thinks the whole thing is super funny, because Bill is just a baby, and then Eric jumps in front of Sookie before she can yell Bill's name a whole bunch of times. Talbot's still staring at the ruined ceiling, because that's as deep as Talbot goes. Bill begs Eric to get Sookie out of there, but instead he pretends that he has no idea what Sookie is or what she's up to. All he'll say, which serves his interests in several ways, is that whatever it is, it's clearly valuable. Sookie is so dumbfounded -- there are vampires that don't adore and worship her? -- that she stops saying Bill for a second and thinks about yelling Eric a bunch of times instead.

"Eric, what the fuck?" she shouts, and Eric does a whole flirty thing with Russell about how he hasn't tasted her but he's sure she's delicious, and she yells at him for awhile and Eric does his whole mincing act some more -- which would be annoying, but comes off just overplayed and desperate because of his two agendas of saving Pam and then killing Russell -- which Talbot does not like one bit. Russell, you can't tell with him. He seemed to think Bill was the bee's for a few days now, and that was clearly its own kind of farce, so who knows? Certainly not Talbot, who looks from one to the other and then starts yelling about "our home" in a way that seems equally threatened by Russell and Eric's vibe -- from both directions -- and the fact that nobody's commiserating about the damage to the house.

Talbot stalks off bitching in Greek, throwing Russell off to the point that he remembers to stop flirting with Eric just long enough to send Bill to "the slave quarters" so that Lorena can kill him to death. Nobody is that happy with this plan, but Russell -- throwing his Kingly weight around, terribly scary for a moment -- knows that she'll draw it out as long as possible in the hopes that she can torture Bill until he loves her again, at which point she'll be broken either way.

Russell isn't a fan of Lorena by any stretch, but this is actually a brilliant way of taking her off the board long enough to deal with his new toy: Her Bill obsession is a thorn in his side, and the greatest thing about Russell, as a King, is turning his weaknesses into advantages. She'll get what she wants, and it'll destroy her, and either way his rule will be strengthened by the demonstration of what happens if he doesn't love you. He leaves Eric and the guards to deal with the other messes, and goes off to tend Talbot's hurt feelings. Open marriages are like so imaginary.

Lorena gets a face full of Sookie's bullshit, and reminds her of how she's always sort of wanted to murder Sookie real hard, but then makes a mistake: Pissing Eric off by noting that Sookie was only saved in Dallas by "that sanctimonious little prick Godric." She scoots to hang out with Bill -- and get out of the reach of Eric's fangs -- and then left alone, Sookie spits at Eric about how he better be fucking pretending or else she'll stomp her feet and speech him ad nauseam. That is a threat you don't take lightly.

But -- Sookie being absolutely at the bottom of the list right now -- Eric recapitulates Bill's whole move here, and says that nobody smart would ever try to play the King, so therefore he is being an asshole in reality. As he hustles her off to a library, Sookie asks him about all his million other things going on, and he's like: "Exactly, so shut up so I can think." He has no problem with extra variables, but things just started moving very fast. Meanwhile, of course, Sookie goes into her usual begging/demanding mode, and he wraps one giant hand around her face to shut her up. Behind his hand, Sookie is still going.

A very familiar actress with lovely blue eyes who I can't figure out right now is giving Arlene the business over at Merlotte's, with curlers in her hair and a serious attitude problem: "And what is your vegetable of the day? And how are those prepared?" Arlene, frustrated and at the end of her already usually short fuse, finally sighs. "Those are dumped out of a can into a big pot, and heated up. I mean, where do you think you are, lady, Red Lobster?" The woman gives her all kinds of shit about it and threatens to snatch Arlene's "cheap dyed hair" right off her head. I would love just once to see Arlene in a fistfight with like Maxine or something, hissin' and spittin' and feelings all hurt.

On the other side of the bar, Jesus and Lafayette are still playing pool on their marathon date and making weirdly dated sex references -- "That sucked, and not in a good way" -- and Arlene tosses down the old bitch's order: "Curlers over there wants the chicken fried steak, extra gravy on the side, extra mash, no veggies." Lafayette assumed he was off the clock, what with Sam and Tommy going home and getting into their whole deal with Joe Lee, but I guess not. Jesus offers to help, cringingly suggesting that cooking is only one of his many, many talents, which I don't know if you picked up on what he means but he what he means is that he is also good at fucking dudes. In addition to cookery.

By Jacob Clifton

Arlene gets Curlers' tea ready, while muttering hilariously to Jessica -- "And I want a freshly cut lemon in my iced tea, not some dried-out thing that's been sitting around all day..." -- and then, forgetting that she's a hateful racist for a sec, complains to Jessica that she cut her finger and got lemon juice in it, as though she is a person or a friendly coworker. Well, the fangs pop out, which is just embarrassing for everybody concerned, and Arlene gets fifty kinds of freaked out about it. Which, I mean, everything she says and thinks is understandable, like, the only reason her anti-vamp sentiments reflect negatively on her is because we love Jessica. On the other hand, it's understandable why Jessica finds her so frustrating. I don't know, it's a good situation all around.

Jessica tries to explain to the shuddering Arlene that the fang thing doesn't mean anything and sometimes it just happens, and if she had a Trapper Keeper she would maneuver it subtly in front of them, but Arlene is just horrified and making a finger cross. "Please don't kill me. I'm pregnant! ...That probably just makes you wanna eat me even more," she says to herself, while Jessica pulls it together and feels all embarrassed. "This is why people hate y'all!" she says, and runs away. Jessica gets a headache and moans that she just hasn't eaten in a few days. (Which, they have TruBloods, Tara gave one to Franklin Mott I think yesterday, but I feel you.)

Jason and Crystal are still making out by that (once fake-looking, but this week totally magical) lake, and he talks about how warm she feels -- "We run hot," Alcide said -- and that it makes sense because they are both "on fire." Warming to his subject, he says Crystal shouldn't stress that she "ain't no virgin," because she makes him feel like one. I love the way he double-takes at that one, like one complete thought: Why would that be a problem? Is that a problem? I'm not a virgin either! We're both not virgins! Oh, gotcha. It's fine, I see what you're saying. For his part, he makes Crystal feel like the opposite of a virgin: "110% woman." Math is among the many things they don't study in Hotshot past a certain grade level, I guess.

But the moment is past. Crystal's got all manner of shit to deal with, which she's been saying, but in such vague language it's not surprising he never heard: "It ain't. I wanted to just get a taste of something I could remember forever, but..." She starts crying, which just pisses her off more. He tries desperately to get her back in the moment, applying every Jason trick he's got and making up more on the fly: "Hey, there's no reason for you to cry! Not when you're with me." He promises to take care of her, but it's just another written exam: The connection between them is electric, so this is a right choice, and by making right choices and committing to them, he will become a man. To love is to bury. It's a tale as old as time.

Crystal arches her back suddenly -- God, is she a dancer? That was beautiful -- and sniffs the air, realizing they are in trouble and she needs to bounce with a quickness. "Keep it down," she hisses at his complaints, and helps him stand up. The most interesting line here -- again in response to a meaningless romantic "I ain't letting you go!" -- is this: "Ain't nobody owns me!" There was already a certain amount of Green Mansions in this story, but the idea -- that Crystal, who is in fact "owned" in many ways by the Hotshot community -- is encapsulated here. So then what does that mean for Jason?

If we're following the chaos/control beats, Jason now has at least two reasons to pursue Crystal: First, for his own tainted concept of self-control to have a focus, but now also to rescue her, and by preserving her wildness* find a way to hold onto his own. As a straight white man he has no concept of being contained like that, but he does know there is a better version of himself trying to get out, so -- later, once he sees her life -- he'll have to cast himself as a fairytale prince, riding in on his white horse.

Which in turn accomplishes the third, unmentionable, goal, which is restoring his image of himself as Hero, which was never stronger than in the moment right before he killed Eggs, and never weaker than in the moment right after.

Go with what you know, but by linking her to the crime life in Hotshot this becomes a valid way of accomplishing both his personal and his lifestyle goals in a way that confirms his masculinity, which is the point of the exercise. However, as a straight white man, he also has no real concept of what to do if/when that goal is compromised, which means any hitch in the road sends him spiraling off into self-sabotage: Newer, weirder repressive places, where exercising control becomes more important than finding it, and where taking down Kitch, the Bon Temps definition of a Hero -- a label he had and lost well before Eggs, when he grew too old and didn't notice he'd done so -- becomes, for him as it once was for Andy Bellefleur, the best thing.

By Jacob Clifton

*("Preserving" is not "taming," but this is another harsh truth about love: What Lorena loves most in Bill is his goodness and his purity, and it's that she always tried to destroy. What Franklin loves most in Tara is her madness, which he is burning away as quickly as possible. What Sookie loved most in Bill was the silence of a blank slate, which is getting filled in more quickly than she can even follow. Jason wants Crystal for her wildness, but only so he can tame his own. Lafayette and Jesus... Want to play pool for six hours and then not make out a whole lot? The jury is still out on Lafayette and Jesus.)

There is a lovely subtext to the confrontation between Sookie and Eric that references their shared dreams and emotions in a very realistic way. It's one thing to think about the blood-bond in a WTF universe like this, but another thing to see how it plays in a realistic conversation. Like she calls him a liar for saying he cared about her, and he says he never said anything of the kind, and then says "maybe you dreamt it," which is partially but not entirely true, and then -- echoing his last dream, where she called him "cowboy" -- Sookie questions his cowboy bona fides: "You big phony. Big hat, no cattle!"

"I hate your fucking guts, Eric Northman. I promise I will pay you back for this!" Eric feels shitty for a second, but once he hears Russell entering the room -- "Sorry to have kept you waiting, a husband's work is never done..." -- he plasters that gigantic awful good-boy smile on again, and flirts on out of there. Sookie gives him the stock answer -- "I'm a waitress" -- and he either references Dorothy Parker or just pull from the cliché generator Lorena and Bill recently installed: "Yes, and I am Marie of Romania!" He reminds her that even immortals don't have inexhaustible patience, and she stares at him all teary-eyed and tries to remember what she's got to work with.

Arlene's pink bra matches her fanny-pack. That's not a good thing. She realizes almost immediately -- after a bit more of that easy, coworker chat about how Terry gets frazzled after a day of babysitting, which is odd since he just moved in earlier today -- that Lafayette and Jesus have left her alone with Jessica, and she gets scared again: "Okay, but just so you know? This necklace is pure silver. And I take garlic supplements too." Jessica tries to explain about how the fangs don't mean she's going to attack Arlene, and she softens somewhat to bitch about how she got no tips tonight. Jessica feels bad about that one, so she figures out a way where everybody wins. Well, almost.

"Don't kill her or anything," Arlene warns, and Jessica goes to visit Curlers' table. "Excuse me, ma'am? You're not hungry anymore. Now, I want you take all the money you have and leave it on the table then head to the ladies', alrighty?" She comes back and tells Arlene it's over for the night, and then meets the lady in the WC for a quick snack. The bizarre sexual sounds from behind the door don't seem to faze Arlene, although she's a bit weirded out when Curlers -- kerchief now around her neck, you see -- comes out woozy and happy. "Thank you so much. You are the best waitress I've ever had." She takes off and Arlene stares at the shitload of money in her hand, and then Jessica zooms at her out of nowhere, congratulating her on a good end to the night: "You got a nice tip and nobody got killed! See you tomorrow..." I guess that pep talk from Pam really helped.

Out in the luxury automobile, Jesus and Lafayette are listening to French rap from the Sex & The City finale. Yes because they're gay, and yes because like Alan Ball, all good NPR listeners know that "Escape From Dragon House" was a Dengue Fever song, but also because it's a fusion of French and African-derived music, which is another hint as to Jesus's origins. Also, it sounds pretty bad-ass, in a sort of Express Men/Armani Exchange/"Life In Mono" kinda way. (And also-also, maybe this will matter down the road: The song is called "La Bette Et Le Bad Boy.")

Infos exposed: Lafayette was born in Bon Temps and has lived lots of places, but either he's not done with it or it is not done with him. Jesus was born in -- and I highly recommend you click this link -- Catemaco, Veracruz Mexico, and dragged all over the place by his mami, from Texas to Uruguay to Portugalto Montreal. On the papi front -- and yes, the awkward way these two talk to each other in this episode makes you feel just as white and embarrassing as you think -- there is none, because Mami was... RAPED.

So if you are keeping score, nobody knows who Jesus's father is. Although I'm sure his variety of carpenter stepdads tried their best.

"Makes all those jokes your mom cracks about me raping her that much funnier," Jesus smiles, but also: A half-human santero that works as a nurse? No wonder they picked the biggest hottie they could find, that is awesome. Lafayette is oddly comforted by the whole child-of-rape scenario, being that his family is a sort of horrible vortex of weird shit, and admits that he thought Jesus was the old "Satan in a Sunday hat" scenario their family's always so worried about. Jesus calls attention to his name and declares himself "the polar opposite of Satan," which means hopefully we won't get more of those syncretist elisions like last year's Dionysus/Horned God/Satan nonsense, because that confused a lot of people, and pissed off tons more. (In fact, maybe Jesus can help untangle that this year?)

Jesus asks to kiss Lafayette, and Lafayette kind of jerks back, and Jesus apologizes for not just going for it, but then instead of going for it he tells Lafayette about his first-date rule, and then instead of going for it they talk about how sometimes he doesn't follow that rule, and then instead of going for it they talk about how maybe they should follow that rule, and then instead of going for it they talk about how they're going to for it, maybe, and then instead of going for it they lean closer and closer and slower and slower and just when you're like, "Maybe this is sexy but I don't think so," they talk about how Lafayette is "feeling something all kind of intense," and then instead of going for it they talk about how ambiguous that intensity may be, and then instead of going for it they get just comically close to each other's faces, like one of those Greek paradox things where the turtle never gets there, and finally Jesus admits that he is "getting kind of hard" just by looking at Lafayette which is what you call a deal-closer, but then instead of going for it they stare at each other some more and then they finally kiss for one whole half-second. The awkward end.

By Jacob Clifton

So if you are keeping score, nobody knows who Jesus's father is. Although I'm sure his variety of carpenter stepdads tried their best.

By Jacob Clifton

Russell builds a fire even though it's summertime and then burns himself on the poker just to freak her out, and Sookie tells him it's good they're having a meeting because she has some damn questions for him too. Which is adorable, although Russell subtly reminds her about the fine line between "feisty" and "delusional." She says he has no way of knowing whether or not she's bargaining from a position of power, which impresses him enough that he calms down and agrees to a Q&A. La Belle et la Bête, sitting down beside the fire.

"Are you the King of all vampires?" He laughs and explains about the retarded royalty thing of vampires. "Do you have a crown?" asks Sookie, because she is a freak and that's honestly the thought she had. Yes, he has several, including one that is going to get his ass murdered. So now Russell gets two questions: First of all, what is she. He reminds her that all things told she has no way of truly knowing whether her parents were really human, or even if they were her parents, but she admits that her grandfather was like her: He could hear thoughts of people and, she presumes, shifters and weres, although -- one would take pains, I think, to make this clear -- not vampires.

Russell commiserates on the telepathy -- "How dreadful that must be!" -- but for inhuman reasons ("Who cares what anyone else is thinking?") that reverse the calming effect of his seeming compassion, so now she's back on the offensive. Is Lorena gonna kill Bill? (Congratulations on being cool for a second before starting with the Bill stuff, Sookie!) Russell explains that, as Lorena's "drug of choice," Bill is in no danger of dying any time soon. "She's gonna have a hard time letting go," he says, with a little wink that says it's going to be pretty terrible for Bill. Sookie begs him to stop this, but Russell instead produces Bill's Sookie Stackhouse dossier.

Sookie flips through it, but can't even finish saying What the FUCK? before Russell gets bored and snappish. "My turn. What are you besides a telepath? And what on Earth makes that light come out of your hands?" He offers to torture it out of her, which is so frustrating that she tears up in anger. "I don't know. I never even knew I could do it until recently, and I don't know what I am. Maybe I'm an alien. All I know is, it's something big. So if I were you I wouldn't hurt me or anyone I care about." He doesn't dignify this last with anything like a response.

Oh Franklin, you crazy thing. So Tara's like, "Where you been?" all flirty, and he gets very dark and pissy: "Tara, I will not be policed." She tries to backtrack from the weirdness of that -- Ball does very well the awkward feeling of talking to crazy people, riding that shifting equilibrium of expectations and how you're constantly finding yourself in a new conversation with no idea how you got there -- and apologizes, saying that she meant she just couldn't wait to get him back. He t-bones the conversation again, whining that she hasn't even noticed that he shaved so how could she pretend to care at all, and she doesn't even have time to save that one, because then he's all romantic and talking about looking nice for her, their wedding night tomorrow, and the fact that since Sookie's already been kidnapped for Russell -- questions regarding which go flying unnoticed past Franklin's head -- his current contract is ended.

Not great news, the fact that Franklin now has no reason to leave her side ever again, before or after she becomes his VAMPIRE BRIDE, so she flirts masterfully and sort of hypnotically and begs him to untie her so they can have some mutually satisfying sex. She has a brilliant idea, also, which is to get high on V so she can bust up out of there, and puts it into motion, pretending her shudders have nothing to do with terror: "I'm gonna drink your blood tomorrow night? I want it now! I wanna experience being high on you while making love to you. Knowing it's my last act as human, I wanna have the most amazing sex any human can have before I give myself to you... And death!"

(As hard to watch as the Lorena/Bill stuff is, it makes sense in the context of their vibe. This is something we get into a lot with Gossip Girl, actually, where each character has his or her own set of classic romantic (oven specifically Gothic) tropes and images, from Chekov to Byron to Kerouac to Audrey Hepburn -- no, I'm really not making this up -- that inform their storylines and even sometimes the way their stories are directed and filmed. In addition, Alan Ball is all for substance as long as it doesn't interfere with his impressionism. So that stuff gets a pass from me because we're in that stylistic mode, same as all of Sookie running through graveyards in her respective nightgown was a lovable indulgence that took some getting used to.

But then here, you have this perfectly effortless, hilarious chemistry between Franklin and Tara, where all you want is to hear her say shit like this, knowing that she, and we, are only playing along to whatever Castle Of Otranto bullcorn Franklin's spinning out right now, because it's awesome. It's fun and funny, and the groans it gets are because it's uproariously funny, not because the characters -- and thus we, on some level -- are acting like total gaywads. Which, we already have to grade Bill Compton on a curve for that as it is.)

By Jacob Clifton

"I wish I had known you before you were made. Before you turned hard. I would've liked to have seen you smile with light in your eyes, instead of darkness. That would have been something." You can't see it, but he's making an autopsy incision, down the center of her chest. Lorena weeps, dark blood, and swears she has no other choice. Russell, and Istvan before him, have put them in this place. She is who she is; it's a tale as old as time. She says his name, torn by this last cruelty, and slashes at his face.

But Eric plays it just right, falling somewhere between Helpful Servant and Concubine Applicant, and can share an indulgent smile with his King when Russell tsks, "He's in one of his moods." Russell vaguely gives Eric the impression that they're going to Shreveport, which is a relief since they've got until sundown to save Pam, which is literally hours away. But you don't become King without a well-managed schedule, and in fact Russell's got a whole other gambit to play before that, and he knows he needs to leave Eric hanging as long as possible, which means going to New Orleans first even if he doesn't say it aloud.

Sookie screams Bill's name and threatens to use her "powers" against the Vampercrombie taking her upstairs, but once she's in her room -- screaming Bill's name, okay, at the walls of the empty room I guess just on the off chance this is all just a gorgeous mistake -- she gets a psychic message from Tara: Sookie. Sookie. Don't worry, Sookie. I'm gonna get you out. Wait until the sun comes up. I'll find you. Be ready. Because we're gonna need all the luck in the world, but I'm gonna get us out of here. I'm not giving up without a fight. It's immensely empowering to hear, spooned as she is with sleepy Franklin and covered in his blood, but also sort of harrowing, because she's just sending these thoughts out as hard as she can without any idea if she is doing it right or just praying to nothing at all. "You have no idea what awaits you on the other side, my beautiful bride. No more pain. No more fear," says Franklin Mott. "No more rules."

Flirty-flirty in the towncar on the way to New Orleans, talking about this and that. Eric says he has no interest in Miss Stackhouse beyond his onetime "constituent" Bill's obsession with her, and the Queen's interest. "I do not get attached to humans," and overplays it I think a little bit by implying that he'd rather fuck the King than taste the waitress. (The way Russell chuckles, it seems he's amused by all this, and maybe not because it's so flattering.) As for the Were he killed in her house? The one that was there to kidnap her? That was just him getting attacked while trying to find Bill. He brings up the fact that werewolves are "base, primitive creatures," and questioningly notes that Russell is the only vampire he knows that feels differently. If there's more to the story -- and perhaps Eric knows or senses that there is -- he'll need to know it before taking the King on.

By Jacob Clifton

Russell sends Sookie back upstairs -- screaming about Bill, duh -- and Eric watches Russell and Talbot very quickly, with that conspiratorial flirty smile plastered on, at all the cracks in the spaces between them. He won't tell Talbot where he's going, saying it's just business, and Talbot doesn't even have time to get pissy about that before the King invites Eric along, which shifts the triangle all the way over into a new shape: "You never take me anywhere! Because you prefer to be in the company of sycophants!"

Russell and Eric lock eyes, smiling indulgently about it, so Talbot almost gratefully takes the bitchy-wife role again for his exit scene: "Deep down, my darling, you have very weak character." (While Eric would I think normally smack you for calling him a sycophant, like what a ridiculous accusation, we're dealing with a King so he gets to practically roll his eyes, like, "What can you do? You say sycophant, I say smitten.") Though for what it's worth, I feel bad for Talbot here, because No Threesomes is the rule and this is why: Not even Talbot knows if he's feeling bad because Russell chooses Eric over him, or Eric's choosing Russell. They both sting, and he has to admit the possibility he'll be left out because that's exactly what Eric's been leading him to think will happen to Russell.

Jesus wonders why he's working with such powerful Gods -- "These guys are pretty fucking hardcore, dude" -- but quickly realizes that Lafayette is, at best, a dilettante. Which I mean, he even seems to read Tarot as just like ambience, so he's not wrong. (Still, though: Jesus just happens to pray to the exact three Gods that are on Lafayette's altar? Out of all of them?)

"Lafayette, man, these guys? They have to be appeased, bro, or else they will fuck you up. Seriously, I sing for Eleggua. I put out shots of tequila for Chango." To be blessed and then drunk. Jesus is telling him some important, if basic, stuff, but Lafayette doesn't notice that. It's probably best, since the whole scene smacks of info-dump and more of that Rachel Getting Married/NPR globalism chic rather than anything approaching organic storytelling. They think about drinking some shots for Chango, or maybe fucking for him, so they do some kissing that is not exactly at a snail's pace, but of course the Hotshot homophobes show up immediately to wreck that lovely car.

Points to be made: Lafayette is a faggot, his car is "non-American," he is a "faggot" and additionally a "cocksucker" and a "fucker." Lafayette takes one down while Jesus swings a baseball bat, and beats the shit out of him. Also, he will pay for repairs to Lafayette's "ride," which if he doesn't have liquid cash for that, he needs to get going on selling that V he and Eric forced them to take last night. As for whether V is "evil," Lafayette points out, somewhat validly, that it's no worse than the meth that seems to be 100% of the Hotshot GDP.

Jesus peels Lafayette off the guy, who runs away -- "Go tell your mama two faggots whupped your ass, bitch!" -- and it's all very empowering, with that AIDS-burger taste of going to the same well over and over, but then Jesus indicates that he doesn't date drug dealers, first of all, and that V is a terrible "intense" thing that ruins lives, and therefore this date -- which is going on twelve hours long at least -- has come to an end. Lafayette mutters "bitch" at him for no real reason except that's how they talk in this episode, and Jesus slams the passenger-side door, making it rain glass in a way that's strangely hilarious.

Queen Sophie-Anne acts as a metaphor for our short-sighted and unregulated financial system. It is timely.

The Queen sends Ludis and Hadley to spend the hundred dollars she just won from a lottery scratch-off to buy more lottery scratch-offs -- "Mama's feeling lucky tonight" -- but these are not forthcoming, because guess who just killed or bought off all her guards and invaded her home? Russell, who grins, "Mama couldn't be more wrong!" She hops up in a pretty white suit, dripping with pearls (her location, her palace, her persona are always about the ocean) and worried about Hadley. She's safe, which for Russell means "tied up somewhere," and he once against pleads his troth. "In addition to never touching you," he points out, "I will settle all your debts." Which he should have just said to begin with, because it's the first time she's ever been given pause.

Russell points out that the Magister is close to figuring out she's the source of the V racket, and she says she's already pinned that on Eric, whom she doesn't yet know can hear every word. Russell moves on, even though that's a feint and she's wrong, and points out that the American Vampire League's interests would be served by handing her over to the IRS: "Make an example of you. Assuage the right wing's fears about vampires running Wall Street." Apparently she's no more worried about the AVL (dumb; everybody should be afraid of Nan Flanagan) than the IRS or the Madge: "They have no dominion over me. I'm a Queen." [Idiotic Harvey Fierstein-era joke about "queens," courtesy Russell, redacted because it is 2010. Give me a fucking break.]

Sophie tells Russ to go fuck himself, and that's when Eric appears, dropping her ass and telling her that it is herself who will go and be fucked. "I am older and stronger than you. I only submitted to you in the past because of respect, but you framed me. So I renounce any and all allegiance to you. I am His now." Sophie-Anne refuses to grant him his repudiation, but he offers to up the ante by twisting off her head and tossing it in the pool. She's not going down with a fight, so he gets ready to do so, but Russ makes him let her up, asking again for her hand.

"...Goddamn it," she says, turning away in shame, and Russell giggles. They'll spend today in her palace, and then hit Shreveport at sundown. Eric trails a finger down Russell's chest, apologizing for overstepping, and calls him "My King," and they drag Sophie-Anne off screaming for Hadley like a teddybear and... There's a certain voice that Eric uses when he's flirting with guys that just doesn't do it for me, sort of like the difference between calling to a grown dog and talking to a puppy: There's a lilt in his voice that just seems sort of infantilized and infantilizing and pretty much exactly what a straight dude would sound like if he were hamfistedly trying to get under a gay dude's skin. The Skarsgård Kermit Effect is part of it also, which generally only happens when he's pushing something out wrong.

Though I can see Talbot falling for that shit, dudes that like dudes like dudes, generally. Why not go for that neck-ducking goober routine he used at the Fellowship last year? Well, maybe because it's Talbot's mode, and therefore he knows it will work on both of them. Because it occurs to me he doesn't really pull that shit with Lafayette, and in fact when he's hitting on Lafayette it's pretty much unassailable. And everything is going so well, so perhaps Russell is high enough to think he can have it all -- he certainly seems more affected by Eric's line of bullshit than previously. And really, whether or not Eric is faking it doesn't matter if the goal is having sex with Eric, you know? I guess we'll just have to see him flirt with more guys to make sure, I mean, that's just the experimental method. Probably like a lot of guys. For science.

By Jacob Clifton

Queen Sophie-Anne acts as a metaphor for our short-sighted and unregulated financial system. It is timely.

Okay but then compare to the other few bloodlines we know about: Godric to Eric to Pam (1) -- which is Spartan and beautiful and pure in a lot of ways, and interesting because it's always about teamwork and near-equality and respect and pedagogy -- and Russell to Talbot (2), which stretches so far back that it looks almost normal but is also childless, for reasons that we've seen put a certain pain in Talbot's eyes. And there's Sophie-Anne and Ludis and the rest of her Children we haven't met (3), but I don't remember how much we know about that other than that she likes to keep 'em close.

And all three are royal bloodlines too, don't forget: They are the best and the brightest and have risen the farthest, in sharp contrast to the Istvan line which, at least starting with Lorena-Bill-Jessica, is very young and untrained indeed. And since there's nothing here that isn't a metaphor, and especially given the emphasis on Stackhouse genetics [and the Were Packs, and whatever Hotshot thing], it seems to me that these four families -- and there are at least fifty others in our country alone, just counting royalty -- explicitly and intentionally have something to say about the nature of family itself: If last year was a chess game [albeit between three cults], this year is Falcon Crest. Which makes the Bill and Lorena stuff in this episode fascinating, because not only is it what it is, but it's also a sort of brutal drunk Thanksgiving Dinner throwdown.)

Further: "He made you his mirror, just as you tried to make me yours. He is the reason that a girl who once marveled in the beauty of all life now delights in bringing pain and horror to every moment... Your nature was never mine! I welcome death. Because only then will I be truly free of the disease that is you!"

(Very dramatic, but viewed in terms of dysfunction -- and what Bill still doesn't understand as abusive parenting on his part, which we always knew had to do with Lorena but now see goes back even further -- almost entirely true. Tara learned that lesson last year, with her own mother; she is still learning it, just like Jesus coming out of Lafayette's relationship with his. Think back to the season premiere, when death seemed like the only way Tara could get free of her own mother/disease.) Sooo heavy! What we need right now is Cooter.

Cooter and Debbie come running into the Quarters, assuming that crazy ass Lorena would be in a coffin somewhere and not bleeding all over everything in the room like a lunatic. They apologize, cringing like the FUC do before vampires, and she gives them as much attitude as she can muster. "We was just gonna keep an eye on your prisoner for you, make sure he didn't get away," is the kindly alibi, belied by the shivering junkie vibe and Debbie pretty much licking her lips and staring at all of Bill's blood all over the place. Lorena makes fun of them for being trashy bad liars, and Debbie -- to her credit -- politely explains that it was her junkie ass that made Coot even try for it. Plus, Cooter notes, he loves beating up Bill Compton more than anything in the world, which we know to be true. "Come on," Debbie pleads, both pathetic and sort of rational at once: "Let us just have a little taste. It's just going to waste all over the floor like that!"

By Jacob Clifton

Well past morning. Lorena's got the Bleeds, bad, but you can barely tell because she's so covered in Bill's blood, as is almost her entire mise en place of torture weapons, which rival in number and specificity of use even Steve Martin's from Little Shop Of Horrors. ("Oh, mama.") Bill tells her to go to ground and stop bleeding on him, but she's worried that he'll die and she won't be there for him. Apparently, though, Bill's still got enough energy at least to bitch at her some more.

"And what will you do then? Find another man that you deem honorable? So that you can turn him into a violent, hateful thing like yourself, destroying whatever it was you loved about him to begin with?" At least she knows this one's a broken record, and immediately jumps to the part of the conversation where he totally got off on doing all those things, so you can hardly blame her. "Be a man and admit you liked it," she suggests, but this is Bill Compton we're talking about. Of course he's going to change the subject.

"Just as you liked enticing all those starving men with your flesh, luring them into your maker's clutches so that he could murder them, and defile their bodies in unspeakable ways as you watched?"

(So apparently Lorena was, in her turn, a procurer for her maker -- Istvan, whom we've not heard of before -- and she got stuck doing Suddenly Last Summer bait-and-switch for him. That is really interesting, if you follow it, not least because making a girl do that is about one of the most disenfranchising things you could do. So then fast-forward and she's all alone in the South looking for company, and she lures these men in and tries to find the right one and feeds on the others -- kiss a lot of frogs, etc. -- and in effect becoming her own Istvan. A whore for her own self. That is truly crazy, if she kept the image of herself as his panderer while also telling herself -- for who knows how long? -- that this was her true nature, like she's always going on about.

And then she finally finds this prince, an actual great guy, who turns out to hate her and everything she stands for, and who basically carries the good part of her in his hands, and... Tells her she can't have it. We're piecing it together, but it flows. Because then Bill's reaction to that, overcorrection and assumptions about his true nature, carry over into his treatment of Jessica, who is only now learning to grow past the terrible things he's done to her in trying to raise her right. So on the one hand you have Jessica, who maybe will redeem the bloodline, and now all of a sudden we're learning about this Istvan, who may or may not still be around but represents the branching head of it. Right?

By Jacob Clifton

She's not wrong, but also: Gladiators? Really? I wonder if they fight against regular dogs or other shifters. Think about it: That is two very different stories. At first I thought it was the former, because a person-dog is probably a smarter fighter than a dog-dog, but on the other hand -- speaking of hands, one set of scars on Tommy's little body looks like burning fingers; maybe he fought a Stackhouse once -- there are lots of stories you can tell if it's supes doing the fighting. Which we know for a fact, because every single TV show in the history of TV shows, not to mention every comic book -- hell, Chris Claremont has done it at least once a year since the '80s, with his crazy ass -- eventually does the Freak Fight Club storyline. They even did it on The O.C., a show in which the only supernatural powers are like, One-Liners and Hair Shininess.

I miss shiny hair, everybody is so dirty these days. That last Twilight movie they all looked like refugees. So Tommy points out that Sam is proving to be an endless source of hope, support, financial and lifestyle breaks, and genuine sunshiney good nature, but Melinda doesn't give one shit. There's pain and shame in her voice, and that strange thing where no matter how manipulative she's being, it's also all completely true: She hates this life, her life, she hates having brought Tommy into the world, she hates Joe Lee, and most of all she hates Sam, no matter how much she also loves them all. "He may be blood, but he ain't family. And he ain't never gonna be. He looks down on us. Thinks he's better than us." (And you know what I say: The second you say that, they are.) Tommy points out that in this case, Sam totally is better than them, but it's not a bad thing necessarily.

"Yeah, well, maybe the fuck he is. But you think he's willing to take care of us over the long haul? Once he knows the truth?" Um, why would he? You people are terrible. Tommy is shaken by this last, though, because now that he knows how good Sam really is, it's going to be impossible living up to his example; which is to say, you only fear losing somebody like Sam's love once you learn how good it feels.

Of course Franklin's bedroom has a whole wall full of medieval weapons artfully hung on goldleaf paper in an enormous floor-to-ceiling gilded picture frame. (Sometimes Talbot does all right by me.) Tara coyotes herself out of his arms, once he's dead, and sneaks over to it. See that axe, Thornton? You use that to cut his head off and then hide it in another location. See that spear? You go ahead and put that through his chest, where his heart is. No? You're gonna do your own thing? Oh, a mace, very nice. And how are you going to... Whoa, girl! His head is splattered everywhere! You can stop! No? Okay, keep going until you feel better. It might take awhile.

By Jacob Clifton

Lafayette's old boyfriend, former State Senator and now House Rep (R) Louisiana, 8th District David "Duke" Finch! Well done, show! I can't believe I missed that! Okay, so anyway he's on a Sunday morning program ("taped earlier," so we still don't know what day of the week it is) debating Nan Flanagan about the VRA. He campaigned, if you recall, on your basic MOO platform: No gays, vamps, or weirdos. And I guess it won him the seat! Not to mention his gift for rhetoric -- "you can't hypnotize away the facts" -- which we see as he explains that ratification of the VRA would affect American children negatively by endorsing "deviant vampiric behavior."

In response, Nan Flanagan proves herself a better politician than apparently the entire DNC by making a very simple point: The American people are too smart for fear-mongering. "We have all seen that leaked fundraising presentation which outlines an aggressive strategy that's designed to capitalize on fear and misinformation," she says, and he interrupts to make fun of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" -- which is not a joke, well before Astroturf and this latest Teabagger nonsense, and acting like it's a joke is a fucking joke that puts you right where they want you -- but she points out that by bringing it all back around to children, which nobody but the GOP finds rational, you're verging on grotesque, not to say disingenuous.

(I mean, preach to the liberal choir and all, but conservatives are rich and watch HBO, and they're not hearing you -- they're just getting their wee feelings hurt, which turns it into an elitist thing, which they've decided to say is bad because it helps get poor people to vote for their tax breaks and against their own interests. But I don't have to tell you that, Nan Flanagan.)

Sam comes in and turns off the TV, so Tommy thanks him for letting him crash and hopes Sam won't interrogate him about the Joe Lee incident. Sam has no intention of doing so, and commences grilling, but of course he thought the same thing we did, which makes Tommy laugh: "I ain't scared of him, I just hate him! He's a drunk, gambles away any money we ever get! Fuck him!" Okay, so it's not sex. Violence? "He the one scarred you up?" Tommy snorts again: "He wishes." So then what? "I ain't lying, he ain't never laid a hand on me. He knows better." Then what the fuck is it, because clearly it's not normal. (It is also not something you would ever guess, unless you saw a bunch of scars all over a pitbull's body, which you did, and that pitbull was referred to as "property," which... He was.)

By Jacob Clifton

Tommy says he'll talk about it when he's ready, and Sam says that's fine as long as that moment takes place today, and then Melinda shows up with a big batch of corn fritters and telling Sam to call her "mama." He points out that that's totally weird, and she admits they have "a lot of road to cover." Sam refuses to leave them alone until Tommy says it's okay -- there's a truly suspenseful moment of beautifully edited three-way intensity that makes this storyline all by itself -- but the second he's gone she's slapping Tommy all upside the head for being disrespectful. In moments we have discovered that: Melinda is a dogfighting dog, literally, who gets rid of her kids because they keep her off "the circuit." She would have aborted Tommy -- don't you ever tell your kid this, it's awful -- except Joe Lee was hoping he'd get the gene, and then they'd have two prizefighters in the family and she could rest her old-ass bones.

"My back's done shot from all the years I spent in the ring, I ain't able to work now," she admits. At which point a sane person would just reach out and tip her over and go have some corn fritters -- "Abort this, asshole" -- but of course she immediately starts into the scenarios where she will rot in an alley somewhere, because she needs him, and also now it's Tommy's turn to be a dogfighting dog, which is not how parents work but whatever, and Tommy points out that this is fucked on several levels, and she responds that the world itself is also fucked on several levels.

How did Sam figure it out? I guess just from the obvious evidence. So he calls a meeting with Andy Bellefleur to find out about any dogfighting rings in the area, Andy dicks with him, he reminds Andy that he saved his ass and the town's collective ass from God last week, and then runs off to Bernice to stop the dogfighting. Which I presume will end up appealing to him on a primal level, which Melinda will leverage against his martyr complex, and he'll get lost in the world of the gladiators to the point that the Mickenses don't even matter anymore, and one of the Bon Temps people -- Tara, probs (chaos/control) -- will have to drag him back to sanity again.

(I presume this only because it is the storyline of the 1985 Marvel Comics 4-Issue Limited Series Beauty & The Beast, which featured the X-Men's Dr. Hank McCoy [although he was with the Avengers at this time] and disco's own mutant superstar Dazzler, Alison Blair, just after her outing as the first mutant celebrity. [Alison Blair is sort of the Tara of the X-Men, in that she cannot catch a fucking break.] I remember little of the actual story except all the gladiator mutants had particularly useless/weird powers, there was a small clown-child that I liked, and at some point she got super freaky on him about how "scars have their own kind of beauty" and this kind of shit, which I found a little advanced and to be honest is probably the main reason I'm so creeped out by S&M to this day.)

He zooms past Jason, who is just coming back to Merlotte's for a post-Crystal beer, and Jason gets scared enough that he gets mad. Luckily, Kitch Maynard is fucking a girl in the parking lot, which brings the joy back to Jason's face right quick. He abuses his (imaginary) authority, taps Kitch on his naked ass, throws around some more official language, twists Kitch's arm behind his back, and generally does exactly what you thought he would do. Kitch points out he's not doing anything Jason never did, and Jason swears there's a difference between them. There is a pause.

Which lengthens into a silence, so long that both Kitch and his young lady friend give him a bit of a hurry-up gesture, because there is no difference between Jason and Kitch other than Kitch is on top now, wearing the clothes Jason used to wear -- he's still in his letter jacket, which made less sense in the scene but now, of course, makes total sense -- so he lamely fills it in best he can: "Something about you is wrong. And when I find out what that is, I'm gonna fuck you up good, boy. You got it?" Jason caresses Kitch Maynard's hair, just a little bit, and lets him go; when Kitch calls him a freak, Jason is inclined proudly to agree. As long as we get to see more Kitch, I say you do whatever you feel like doing.

By Jacob Clifton

Jason puts on his most flattering jeans and his letter jacket and heads on over to Hotshot with a bouquet, having somehow figured out where Crystal lives. (Jacket: Why? Maybe part of this is time travel, and all the things he should have done out of high school like normal people do, like he would have done, if there weren't something wrong about him.) A Hotshot dude -- all bruised up from Lafayette, and possibly Eric the night before that -- answers the phone and laughs cruelly at him: "Babe, somebody here to see you."

She yells at him when she comes to the door -- their house is so sad, buddy -- and tells him she's never seen him before, he is a dumbass, this guy is her fiancé and probably her brother, and then they redneck yell at him for awhile, and of course this all takes hella long because Jason is super dumb, so it's maximum awkward, but he finally leaves. Crystal backs away from the door and shuts it, looking out, like she's locking herself in. Like Beauty, trapped up there with the Beast, hoping love will be enough.

Tara scrounges up a big bowl of almonds, inspired by last night's lily dinner, and puts on an apron over her silk robe. She looks pretty great without all that blood everywhere; also, how scary must it have been to creep through that whole mansion knowing that almost everybody in it was dead? Don Swayze's at Sookie's door, and Tara is scared of his werewolf muscle but still tasking on V, so she saunters up and yells at him about how she better get in there for the delivery or else Talbot will be pissed, which will piss off Russell, which means no blood for werewolves. Somewhere between that threat and her intense alpha behavior, he lets her in. Of course, Sookie is waiting by the door with something heavy so that when Tara asks him where she went, Sookie can brain him. Then, I think, they beat him half to death.

(Bill-flinging, Bill-torture, Swayze beatings, Franklin-brainings... You're right, this show is totally sexist in the way it graphically portrays violence against women! That's not facile and pointless at all!)

Many minutes later, when they have bathed in Don Swayze's blood and brain bits and little shards of ribs, Tara grabs Sookie and heads for the hills; Sookie avoids saying Bill's name but only by asking what the hell Tara's up to. "Killing vampires and saving your ass, I'll fill you in later." You left out the part about not talking about Bill for five seconds, but I guess you'll figure that out soon enough. You'd think Sookie would just be amazed that somebody's acting ballsier than she does. I'm so proud of Tara, for all of this, but I think especially for the blood-drinking, because that is probably the one thing I'm not sure I would have been able to accomplish.

By Jacob Clifton

Post-Jesus, Lafayette is feeling motherfucking snappy this morning and he does not need your help understanding the basics of cocksucking breakfast thank you very fucking much. But this is only the latest in a series of times already today that Arlene has been stepped on by those around her. For e.g., what did she see on her way to work but them nasty Mickenses absconding with a pitbull from his house itself, which directly contravenes Sam's No Pets Not Even A Hamster For Little Coby And Lisa rule, but then I guess that's how pet-based nepotism works. Of course, Sam knows that this means his brother has been abducted, so he runs out on Arlene mid-bitch, which makes three times Arlene has been disrespected this morning. But I think she'll recover: "Damn," she says, "Everybody's ignoring me today." (So if there are no other waitresses, does she just work triple-shifts at all times? Why is she doing breakfast? There is so much I do not understand about Merlotte's.)

Where in the world is that pokey little puppy? Where in the world is he? Where could the puppy be? Where could the puppy be? By the time Sam finishes singing that song and rooting through his trailer and I guess smelling the air, he has somehow done figured it out.

Tara's trying to explain about how if they can just find one of Russell's gold-dipped automobiles and hotwire it, they can drive over any werewolves that give chase, and furthermore... Wait, Sookie's got something to say. What's that, Stackhouse? Four letters, starts with "B" and ends with "eeeeeeeeel"?

Tara explains that, among other disturbing behaviors, Bill was most recently spotted covered in blood and telling the King of Mississippi to kill her, while she was tied to a chair in the parlor right over there. Now, I'm not one to hold a grudge, but it seems to me that declaring yourself unwilling to risk your life to save his quote "dead ass," that would be understandable. "He may not be dead," Sookie says, not realizing Tara was using that word in the racist way, and also clearly his negative actions are not anything that he would ever do on his own. "They forced him to do that! That's not who he is!"

Which: Tara has no way of knowing is the only thing that's kept Sookie alive (thus far) this season, the belief that her Bill is the best Bill and the real Bill -- which makes even his stonefaced trip to Alcide's right before Russell got there evidence for and not against the Plaintiff -- so she tells the truth: Sookie is -- just possibly, just maybe -- a giant fucking idiot.

By Jacob Clifton

Coot and Debbie come wandering out of the Quarters, high on V and talking like happy trippers ("You taste like fucking life itself!") and total trash -- their romantic dream involves him stealing clothes for her from "4-Ever Young" -- so Sookie rolls her eyes and waits for them to wander off before finally heading inside. Meanwhile, Tara's surprised by a beautiful white wolf, which turns into beautiful Alcide, who nakedly assures her he's a good guy, and that he's got wheels to help save Sookie.

Sookie drops to her knees at Bill's side and breaks her own record of saying Bill's name over and over. He is nonresponsive, due to the fact that he is mostly dead and it is the middle of the daytime, but he finally says her name. She gives him a whole speech about this and that, instead of getting him out of there, and then Lorena -- for whom, at this point, the Bleeds just seem like a fashion choice -- grabs her, knocks her against the wall, and then begins to feed.

week: The chain incident explained, among others, but mostly: Unforgivable things.

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see vloggers Val and Beth discuss vampire pregnancy in TV is the Answer!

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